Giovanni
General Name: Giovanni Plural: Giovanni Pronunciation: jee-oh-vah'-nee Nicknames: Necromancers, Necrophiles/iliacs Antediluvian: Augustus Giovanni (Cappadocius) Allegiance: Independent, the Giovanni Family Disciplines: Dominate, Necromancy, Vigor Theme Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8SWVLDBkPs "All That I'm Living For" - Evanescence *("All that I'm wanted for / Although I wanted more / Lock the last open door / My ghosts are gaining on me") The usurpers of clan Cappadocian and the youngest clan of Caine, the Giovanni are both a clan and a family. They Embrace exclusively within their family (one of many things kept within the family), and are heavily focused on two goals: money and (necromantic) power. Disciplines The Generic Giovanni History Dark Ages In 1005, in the hollows of Erciyes and under the shadow of Cappadocius' torpid form, Augustus Giovanni was brought into clan Cappadocian, directly embraced with the blood of the Founder and under the watch of Japheth and Constancia. While the embrace is relatively well known, what is not well known is the horse-trading before it. The Clan of Death, the Cappadocians followed their Founder in a quest to understand the mysteries of death and God, including Cappadocius' plan to diablerize the Almighty. However, lacking knowledge about the soul (the Cappadocians' signature discipline of Mortis focused more on the act of dying then the events afterwards), the Founder began to shop for experts. Enter the Giovanni, a family of prosperous Venetian traders who had for centuries depended on Necromatic skill to provide a business edge. Interested in expanding his family's power and seeing Vampirism as the route to doing so, Augustus Giovanni had been studying the clans and entertaining offers from various vampiric elders for the Embrace. The Cappadocian offer was the most attractive, providing the highest generation (as well as the most manipulable clan). As a result, and despite the protests of Cappadocius' eldest childer, the Antediluvian rose from Torpor and provided Japheth with a small vial of his blood. Japheth reluctantly did so, draining Augustus and pouring most of Cappadocius' donated blood into the throat of a drained Giovanni (The remainder was hidden by Japheth, the True Vessel becoming a major element Giovanni rumor). Following his ascent into the blood, Augustus Giovanni immediately began embracing his own family. In the course of doing so, the Giovanni became something between a bloodline and a cult within the Cappadocian clan. Acknowledged as the experts on Necromancy (and rapidly expanding the field), the Giovanni maintained themselves slightly separate from the mother clan. This, as the Giovanni claim is because Augustus had planned to usurp his sire from before he was Embraced. In 1444, these plans came to fruition. Augustus Giovanni's childe, Claudius Giovanni formed a conspiracy to diablerize Japheth, the most beloved of Cappadocius' childer. The Conspiracy of Isaac was a criminal force in itself, but ultimately a distraction - since Hardestadt and other founders of the Camarilla had turned their eye towards the diablerie of elder vampires, Augustus wanted a catspaw, an obvious plan to distract them while he went after the greater prize. In 1444, both plans came to fruition, with Japheth dead, Cappadocius dead and both Giovanni raised a generation. Taking advantage of the chaos of the era, Augustus began a purge of the Cappadocians that, while taking centuries to wipe out the stragglers, would be sufficiently successful that by 1528, he could negotiate a peace with the Camarilla, the Promise of 1528 was created. The Giovanni were left alone and left the Camarilla alone, exactly as the Giovanni wanted it. Renaissance Period The ultimate goal of the clan was outlined by Augustus Giovanni after reviewing Cappadocius' original plan. Clan Giovanni acquired the bulk of its power by the hold it maintained over wraiths, so by tearing down the Shroud, the clan of Death would be able to increase its power beyond conception. Giovanni outlined plans to do so, with the most difficult goal being the acquisition of vast numbers of souls to enact the necromantic rituals necessary. From 1528 onwards, the Giovanni were basically left alone to pursue their goals. By opting out from the increasingly hot Camarilla/Sabbat wars, their resources were devoted to three goals: increasing necromantic knowledge, acquiring additional financial clout, and eliminating the remaining Cappadocians and Lamia. Each of these goals tied back into their eventual plan to tear down the Shroud: Necromantic knowledge to acquire the souls, finance to increase the soul supply by buying slaves and engineering economic disasters, and eliminating Cappadocians to keep the only possible squealers tightly shut. During this period, the Giovanni involved themselves in a variety of occult activities, primary through the clan's notorious scholar Ambrogino Giovanni. At the same time, the Giovanni made bargains with entities like the Capuchin to acquire Necromantic information. Victorian Age Final Nights In the beginning of the twentieth century, the Giovanni were riding high. They expanded the clan into other families (notably the Milliners, della Pasaglia, Pisanob and Ghiberti), wiped out the last of the Cappadocians and their Lamia protectors, and prepared to rend the Shroud and bring the dead to the living. By the end of the century, things had gone pear shaped. Mysterious vampires, the Harbingers of Skulls, claimed vengeance on the clan for reasons unknown; the Sixth Great Maelstrom shredded Wraith Society; and the apocalyptic events of the Week of Nightmares destroyed their spiritual assets. As the Final Nights ran out, the Giovanni began to wonder if maybe they'd made a mistake. Maybe Augustus Giovanni had underestimated the Antediluvians; maybe the dead would become more potent if the Shroud were pulled down; maybe Caine was real and in the end all of these petty plays and power moves had been nothing but a diversion until Gehenna. Organization The Giovanni are a highly organized clan, consisting of a network of interrelated families who share a common culture and fealty to the ancestral Giovanni family. As a result, despite popular conception, not all Giovanni are Italian. The major families include: *Ghiberti Italian necromancers with an active interest in Africa. *Della Pasaglia Another Italian family focusing on the middle east. *Dunsirn Scottish bankers and cannibals. *Milliner American financiers brought into the family in the early 1900s *Pisanob South American necromancers. Minor families are spread across the globe, and include the Putanesca (blue-collar Italians), the Beryn (Dutch financiers), the St. John (English Masons) and the Wu Leng (Chinese Geomancers). The Giovanni are organized as something between a highly ruthless mafia dynasty and a highly ruthless corporation. Favors such as financial responsibilities (and rewards), ghouling, and the Embrace are dependent on performance; vicious backstabbing and cutthroat competition are the order of the day in a Giovanni household. The Giovanni maintain their own internal Masquerade; a member of the family may be aware that his family is into some weird stuff, but beyond the relatively benign (in comparison) incest and high-finance backstabbing, be blissfully unaware that he's a catspaw for cannibalistic blood-drinking necromancers. Decisions in the Giovanni are made by councils of elders, with age, rank and competence all playing a role. Giovanni are highly family-oriented, even after the Embrace, and will spend centuries guiding their descendants for the greater good of the family (and themselves). ''Antitribu'' There is no such thing as a "Giovanni antitribu". When filial loyalty, Clan loyalty, and the knowledge that the Giovanni can hire a whole pack of killers in any city in the world aren't enough, it comes down to the sad fact that no-one else will have the Giovanni, not even the Sabbat. The Camarilla maintains a polite political distance from the entire Family, and any attempts by the Giovanni to defect or infiltrate the Camarilla would be met with extreme suspicion. Thanks to the non-interference pact signed between the Giovanni and the Camarilla soon after the Convention of Thorns, attempts to coerce or bribe members of the other group would be seen as a violation of that agreement. Sects Between their incredible financial influence and mastery of Necromancy, the Giovanni have all the power they could possibly need, but not nearly as much as they want. With the backing of Augustus Giovanni, an elder of Antediluvian-level power, the Giovanni have politely, but insistently, rejected any offers made to "allow" them into the Camarilla or the Sabbat (not that such offers were very common in the first place). The Giovanni proudly maintains its independence of all over Clans, but is more than happy to play all sides against each other, provided that the Family profits from it. They are rivals with the Followers of Set and the Grimaldi family for influence in high finance, smuggling, drug trafficking, and other lucrative interests, but are not such an annoyance to bestir the Camarilla, Sabbat, or Independent Clans as a whole. The Anarchs simply don't give a damn about the Necromancers. But then, they don't typically give a damn about anything. Bloodlines Culture In many ways, the Giovanni are a ghoul family with less visibly disgusting parts. This doesn't mean the Giovanni aren't as warped as the Tzimisce-bred Bratovitch clan; the Giovanni are repulsive and degenerate in a more subtle manner. Effective Giovanni are sadistic Giovanni. Controlling Wraiths means acquiring fine control over a variety of psychological levers (understanding passions and fetters) and then ruthless manipulating these tools to make a spirit do what you want. The Giovanni have been sadistic, manipulative and vicious since before the time of Christ, and it bleeds out into everything else they do. The outer shell of the Giovanni clan, the public face is less visibly cruel and horrid, but only because these vampires are explicitly tasked to deal with the outside world. The most notorious example of this bleed off is the Giovanni Proxy Kiss. Giovanni make an art out of ghouling, since ghouling is a rite of passage for the Giovanni - ghouling means that the Giovanni is now part of the people who make the family work. Not necessarily a mover and shaker, but something akin to a made man: the Masquerade is pulled back and the truth about vampires is revealed. Giovanni tend to make Proxy Kisses aesthetic efforts, and take a point in pride in producing especially memorable or mind-destroying ones - blood received via fellatio, blasphemous masses and the like are all popular choices. The sadism and weirdness of Giovanni internal culture is enhanced by its incestuous nature. Giovanni can spend the majority of their lives interacting with nobody except other Giovanni, and the resulting insularity breeds additional problems. The Giovanni are, in particular, arrogant and prone to underestimating the world around them. They tend to believe that others will act and react in ways that the Giovanni themselves would, and are surprised when it turns out that vampires of other lineages respond in unpredictable ways. (Such as ripping out the throat of a ghoul in order to prove something, or unleashing magicks against which the Giovanni have no defense.) Clan Prestige • Obscure; you are a member of the Family, for good or ill. You follow your elders' lead and hope to be selected for a job (Chas Giovanni Tello) •• Known; your skill at summoning the dead grows stronger nightly. You've heard the phrase "made man" mentioned occassionally ••• Popular; most of the Family bosses have your phone number. Your connections to the underworld - both criminal and spiritual - are impressive (Isabella Giovanni, Benito Giovanni) •••• Storied; you regularly expand the Family's knowledge of Necromancy. Your temporal power rivals that of small countries and global corporations ••••• Legend; the realms of both the living and the dead shake with your movements. Cheating death is child's play; the potency of your blood may even allow you to cheat revenge (Augustus Giovanni) Style and Appearance Religion and Philosophy The Giovanni are, if anything, severely lapsed Catholics. Due to their practice of Necromancy, they have seen what "the other side" and "life beyond death" really mean, which tends to completely eradicate any faith in a benevolent deity. Giovanni, in a ways similar to the Lasombra Clan, often present the appearance of Catholicism in ritual and Family culture, but have twisted the vestments all around to better fit a vampiric frame. They may attend a certain kind of Mass, where the holy water is blood and the priest a Family elder, but these sorts of ceremonies tend to devolve into orgies, massacres, or other kinds of deviant practices behind closed doors. The Giovanni relationship to the spirit world means that they have a very casual attitude towards such things as torture, dismemberment, and death. After all, if your victim dies in the chair, you can always yank his spirit back from Hell and get information out of him another way. What the Giovanni are really focused on is efficiency: bribery, seduction, and all other sorts of under-handed means are taught to new members of the Clan as a matter of course. If all other methods fail, then killing off the competition becomes a very viable alternative. "If you can't beat 'em, stab 'em in the back and steal their assets from their cold, dead fingers" is a common piece of advice given to neonates. Keep it in the Family: Clan Relationships The Giovanni are perhaps the single most isolationist vampiric Clan in a long and xenophobic history. Even their choice of childer is restricted to not just people of a particular ethnicity, religion, or gender, but to that of a single (if extended) family . This in no way ensures that the Clan (that is to say, the Family) are loyal to each other, as the worst enemy of a Giovanni is more likely to be their own cousin or grandparent than it is to be a vampire of some other bloodline. This insular culture has bred an incredible disdain for other clans, particularly those that do not desire the same things the Giovanni do - wealth, information, and above all, power. Giovanni: Death and Beyond Embraces The Giovanni do not embrace outside of the family; nor do they embrace without permission. Not if they know what's good for them at least. The Embrace is a reward which is almost always givin after a period of ghouldom known as the Proxy Kiss. Often it is a kind of promotion for good service. More so than other clans, the Giovanni actively consider factors like generation in the embrace. Being embraced by a lower-generation clan member is considered a akin to a performance bonus. While not uncommon, it is frowned upon to Embrace another of your own mortal family. This would encourage nepotism, and Giovanni much prefer to have the loyalty of their Neonates as divided as possible within the family. For example, while Agatha Milliner might put her own grandson forward for the Embrace, it is much more likely that Stefano Giovanni does the deed. Even better for the Clan if Agatha and Stefano are rivals - the neonate now has loyalty to his own grandmother and his own sire, which forces (somewhat) the two elders to avoid plotting against the other, lest the new childe betray either of them. The Giovanni Weakness Quotes and Criticisms "I don't like zombies and I don't like stuck-up rich bastards. Therefore, I don't like the Giovanni." - Rick Gentle Notable Giovanni *Amatto Giovanni, Augustus Giovanni *Josephine Giovanni *Lorenzo Giovanni *Markus Musa Giovanni, Mercutio Giovanni *Dr. Oliver Genet <<<< BACK